~ Looking At Football And The World Through A Frosted Window

The (Quite Literal) Illustration of a Point

I was discussing additional officials on Twitter during my day off yesterday. I’m an exciting guy, as I’m sure you’re already aware. The conversation was about why additional assistant referees (henceforth AARs) stand on the same side of the field as the assistant referees (henceforth ARs) and Jonathan Wilson put a point that I’ve seen on AskTheRef.com that the initial set-up interfered with the referee’s diagonal running pattern for controlling the game.

I found a UEFA document detailing the positioning of the AARs and it stated they should be on the opposite side to the ARs as it gives greater coverage. That idea was obviously shelved between 2009/10 and now, as certainly, when John Terry hooked the ball off the line against Ukraine the other day, the AAR was on the same side as the AR – on the right hand side of the team going attacking.

My initial thinking about this (indeed I posted a pretty appalling picture illustrating it yesterday) was that being on the opposite side as the AR wouldn’t help the AAR that much as it would create a larger area of doubt between themselves wherein they, and the referee would have a perspective of events that wasn’t vastly different.

I present to you, then, two diagrams. Diagram A (below) shows my opinion of the field of vision for the three officials under the previous set-up; highlighted to the point I think they can be legitimately thought to hold a decisive view.

Referees are meant to be under 20 yards from incidents, as I recall – the highlighted areas are a little smaller than that, though – my thinking being that penalty areas, when the ball is inside them, are crowded; seeing things through 20 yards of humans is tricky. You’ll see that there’s a small gap between the three colours to the right hand side of the goal as we look. It isn’t massive, and obviously the officials would be able to see into it, but there’s a distance to cover first.

Diagram B (below) shows the same concept, but under the current set-up.

As you can see, the coverage demanded of each official is a lot more even, so the AR and AAR should be able to offer the referee valid opinions from closer, and the referee himself has less ground to ‘see’. I discovered yesterday that this point of visual coverage is difficult to make in just words – this being a case of a picture telling 1000 of them, I hope you can see the point I’m trying to make, and I’d love to know if you agree or disagree. Reply here, or tweet me (@Marco4J).

When i first read that the aar should be on the left hand side of the goal, away from the ar, i thought, it might be a lot better as the angle might be a better one. Yet, thanks to these illustrations it is obvious that this might not be the case. So, for a change FIFA have made the right decision.

1) I guess it depends on the AARs primary function. Is the AAR there to verify decisions on what the AR and R should be able to see, or provide assistance on incidents which the AR or R have no way of seeing, i.e. an additional check or extra pitch coverage.

2) If this programme of AARs is continued – how long before teams look to exploit it the fact that one side of the penalty area is more heavily “refereed” than the other?

Both of those things have crossed my mind, and as far as I can see for (1), they’re there as an addition, so if they see things other haven’t they can draw attention to them, though in practice that seems to happen infrequently.

I think (2) might already be happening with some of the shirt pulling. Its certainly something I’m looking for now.

Interesting. I’ve been wondering why both assistants are on the same side too. The first diagram allows for more coverage of the penalty area. My experience from refereeing under various systems (anything from traditional to two refs with a whistle each to three refs with a whistle each) is that the more refs you have, the less likely any one of them is to make a decision.